Congress Boosts Coast Guard Budget The Coast Guard has often been characterized as perennially underfunded, but thanks to Congress, the service received a major boost to its acquisition accounts for fiscal year 2016.

Planetary Defense: A New Hot Market With little fanfare, NASA in January opened up its planetary defense coordination office with a mandate to identify potential chunks of rock hurdling toward Earth and to stop them if possible.

Lockheed Expands Training and Simulation Enterprise Lockheed Martin is increasing investments in training and simulation technologies with the expectation that international and domestic demand for such systems will remain strong, said executives for the defense contractor.

Pentagon Chief Deals Blow to Navy's LCS The Navy's littoral combat ship/frigate program took a major hit recently when Secretary of Defense Ash Carter suggested the service should slash planned procurement from 52 to 40 ships, a 23 percent cut.

Don't Bank on Relief from DCAA Audits The Truth in Negotiations Act is a statute with which defense contractors are likely familiar. It requires contractors to submit current, accurate and complete cost or pricing data when negotiating certain contracts with the government.

Wearable Device to Assist First Responders The device, which was developed by Mutualink, a Wallingford, Connecticut-based communication and multimedia company, can be used to give agencies and commanders better situational awareness.

DARPA Investing in Vanishing Air Vehicles The project, which is being spearheaded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is known as the "inbound, controlled, air-releasable, unrecoverable systems" (ICARUS) program.

3D Database to Improve Simulated Flight Training Rockwell Collins has unveiled a synthetic database to model environments across the globe that will reduce simulated training costs while improving military readiness, according to a company executive.

More Learning, Less Testing to Boost STEM The defense and aerospace workers of the 21st century will need more than expertise in STEM fields. They will need to be creative, critical thinkers, and they will need to know how to work in teams to solve problems.

Turning Point Coming for National Security The national security landscape has seen significant change over the past five years. The number of deployed forces declined by more than 60 percent from 2011 to the start of 2016, and the Budget Control Act of 2011 ushered in a period of uncertainty.